Conventional packet switching networks are associated with data traffic bursts, i.e., sudden increases/decreases in data traffic flow. In this regard, conventional transmission control protocol (TCP) network technologies use a slow start traffic phase, a congestion avoidance traffic phase, and a fast retransmit and recovery traffic phase to provide congestion control.
Under the slow start traffic phase, a size of a sender's transmission window is initially small, but increases exponentially. After the size of the sender's transmission window is determined to be greater than a threshold, a congestion avoidance phase is selected, in which the size of the sender's transmission window increases linearly. If the sender receives more than a defined number of duplicated acknowledgements (ACKs) during the congestion avoidance phase, the threshold and the sender's transmission window size are reduced, and the fast retransmit and recovery traffic phase is selected. In response to determining that a timeout has occurred, the threshold and the size of the sender's transmission window are further reduced, and the slow start traffic phase is selected. In this regard, conventional congestion control technologies do not optimize use of spare transmission link capabilities, e.g., in high speed networks. Consequently, conventional network technologies have had some drawbacks with respect to controlling network traffic congestion, some of which may be noted with reference to the various embodiments described herein below.